Tennis: do sharp punters place Outright bets?

An Outright bet is a bet placed on the final outcome of an entire competition rather than individual matches. Outright bets are usually placed before a tournament starts but are also available after the competition started.

These kinds of bets are usually characterized by much higher odds when compared to regular match bets and as such can look very appealing to many.

But as in any other betting situation, we recommend you to think twice before placing your Outright bets. In this article, we will analyze some important factors to consider when betting on one of the most popular sports for punters: tennis.

In tennis, most Outright bets mean your player has to win every match he plays to win the trophy (exceptions can be found in rare occasions like the World Tour Finals tournament at the end of the season). Your bet will be a good deal only if your Outright odds are higher than if you decided to bet on every match independently. It might sound obvious, but do punters always consider this?

Let’s have a look at some fresh history on the ATP tour. In january 2014, Lleyton Hewitt was winning the tournament of Brisbane. The highest odds on the Outright market could be found at circa 26.00.
Hewitt on his way to win the title had to go through the following players: Kokkinakis, Lopez, Copil, Nishikori and Federer. Odds for each match were:
1.36
1.54
1.32
2.45
5.90

If you placed $100 on the first match at 1.36 and then decided to bet $136 (100+36) at 1.54 and so on until the final… you would have cashed in a total of $3,996 (minus the initial stake), which is the equivalent of odds of 39.96.
Of course, it was difficult to predict which opponents Lleyton Hewitt would have to face at reach round, but he actually avoided seed #3 (Gilles Simon) who lost in the second round. He did have to go through seeds #2 and #1 (Nishikori and Federer) to win the title, yet your odds of 26.00 were poor value in the end…

Let’s take another example, with the US Open played a few months later.
Marin Cilic was available at odds 160.00 on the betting exchange markets before the start of the tournament.
He won a total of 7 consecutive matches at the following odds:
1.24
1.08
1.43
1.55
2.40
4.20
2.00

By betting $100 on Cilic in his first match, and betting $124 in round 2, and so on… you were winning a total of approximately $6,000 instead of $16,000 on the Outright market. Now, tennis fans remember that seed #1 Novak Djokovic lost in the semi-finals, and if Cilic had to play Djokovic in the final at estimated odds of 6.00, the total odds for Cilic to win the title by betting on him at each round was peaking at 180.00. Still, even in this hypothetical case, the difference of odds was much smaller than
in the Hewitt example.
And tennis fans also remember Cilic defeated Federer in the semi-finals (at odds of 4.20) but Federer had match points to save against Monfils in the quarter-finals, had Monfils converted his match point, Cilic’s Outright odds of 160.00 would have been great value even with Djokovic on the other side of the net in the final.

Moral of the story: it is always crucial to check the draw of the tournament very carefully and try to predict which players could make it far and which other players among favorites are prone to be upset early.

Many punters also fancy the Outright markets in order to sell back their initial picks later on, but as we explained in our two cases above, the main concern of value remains unchanged.